Buzz! Quiz TV Progress Report

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We've got details on a day-and-date patch, Trophies, and local multiplayer.

By Greg Miller

Well, if you're a big Buzz fan, the pot known as Buzz! Quiz TV just got a bit sweeter -- when the game hits retailers on September 23rd, Sony's releasing a free patch that'll add four new characters, a new costume for every contestant, ten new buzzer noises, PlayStation Eye support, and Trophies. If you feel like forking over some cash, three downloadable trivia packs -- National Geographic: Safari, science fiction and videogames -- will also be available at launch.

Sweet.

All this patch goodness comes on top of a game that includes the quiz show's more than 5,000 questions covering the categories of Music, Movies & TV, Sports, Brainiac and Lifestyle; the foray into online play; the ability to create and share quizzes; as well as wireless buzzers.

Now, we've written about some of this before, so let's tackle the newest stuff first. The character and buzzer additions should be pretty self explanatory and will get added to the 28 buzzer noises and 11 playable characters that are already on the disc and they'll all have various costumes and several individual taunts you can access via the buzzer's colored buttons. The PlayStation Eye stuff will pop up during the game to capture the player's reaction to key moments, victory shots, and so on. All these snapshots will get saved to the game's photo album and be accessible from the XMB. Meanwhile, Trophies crop up to reward you for coming in first, playing a certain number of online games, and so on.

I've gotten to play Quiz TV a few times, but it's usually been to show off its Sofa vs. Sofa online mode. However, during the same event where Sony announced the patch details above, they let me and a number of other journalists get our first shots in at each other during a few rounds of local multiplayer matches.

From what I can tell, every game is broken into several rounds such as Fastest Finger (buzz in as fast as possible for the most points), Point Stealer (be the first to answer correctly and you get to choose who to steal from), Short Fuse (a lit bomb is tossed around with every correct answer, and if you have it when it blows, you lose points), Pie Fight (be the first to answer correctly and you toss a pie at an opponent of your choice; two pies eliminates an opponent), and Final Countdown.

Most all of those rounds have appeared in Buzz games before, but if you're an avid fan, you'll be sure to notice a number of visual tweaks and improvements. The pie gunk in Pie Fight looks like slowly running pie gunk when it's on a player and it stays on longer than ever, the blast from the bomb in Short Fuse blackens players in a way that actually looks good and remains comical, and Final Countdown has been re-imagined.

In the past, Final Countdown piled all of the points players had accrued behind them in these visual towers. A question would be asked, the players would buzz in, the right person got more added to their tower, people who were wrong lost tower space, and the system went on until the winner was declared. It was fun, but it seemed to take a while. Now, player points are converted into pedestal height. With the characters up in the air, questions are asked and folks drop a lot quicker. The first person right gets the boost in altitude, the other right answers remain where they are, and folks who are wrong drop a bit. Get to the floor, and a trap door opens to swallow the loser. If the round makes it past a few questions, the drop rate increases dramatically.

Here comes the boom.

Although I've written about Buzz! Quiz TV before, this was by far my longest opportunity to sit down and play the game. As a fan of the series, it appears Sony's bringing everything that made the original titles fun -- Buzz being a jerk, lots of general knowledge questions, and quirky games -- bathing them in HD goodness, posting leaderboards, adding wireless buzzers, and tossing on an impressive heap of PSN functionality such as user-created quizzes, Trophies, and as-of-now unpriced DLC trivia packs. They're even hoping to have a horror pack of questions out in time for Halloween.

If you've been waiting to jump on the Buzz bandwagon, now seems like a pretty good time, because Sony's hoping to have the Web site where PSN users can create Buzz! Quiz TV quizzes live this week so that the My Buzz -- the option where you can download exams, rate content, search by author, and so on -- will be chock full of content at launch.